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| Colombia Peace Presence Update, February 2004 In this Update: … Urgent Action - Paramilitary Incursions
in Jiguamiandó Urgent Action On February 12, about 30 paramilitary troops dressed in camouflage and armed with automatic weapons entered the settlement of Nueva Esperanza on the Jiguamiandó river, Chocó province. In the presence of Peace Brigades International and the Justicia y Paz Commission, they announced that they were going to stay in the region and threatened residents that if they moved, they would "put bullets into your heads". They filmed the settlement and its residents and stole goods from people's houses. The majority of the group stayed for 40 minutes until 7:30 am, and as some 25 paramilitaries left, a military helicopter circled over the settlement. While a group of paramilitaries continued to control the movement of the 15 families and their accompaniers in Nueva Esperanza, another significant number of armed "civilians" - paramilitaries - went on to the settlement of Pueblo Nuevo. At 7:48 am the Colombian government was informed about the situation. In the afternoon, a group of FARC guerrillas passed at some distance by Nueva Esperanza. The next morning, military helicopters were seen that set off explosions in the distance, and in the afternoon a group of guerrillas passed by again. The paramilitary actions have violated the right of the civilian population to be excluded from armed confrontations, as they continue to be directed against the civilians putting their lives at great risk. This situation occurs at a time when a visit by Colombian government authorities, international and national humanitarian organizations has been scheduled to verify the illegal planting of African Palm in the Afro-Colombian communities. REQUEST: Please call or fax the Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos Calderon demanding immediate action about the paramilitary bases in Mutatá, Pavarandó, and Belén de Bajirá, honoring the commitment of the Colombian government to adhere to the UN Human Rights recommendations. Call or fax Dr. Francisco Santos, the Interior Minister Sabas Pretel De La Vega, and the People's Ombudsman Volmar Perez, to ask for an immediate and integral implementation of the Interamerican Human Rights Court's prevention measures. Vice Presidency: 011 571 565 7682, 571 334 1551 or 571 334 5077, Fax: 571 565 9797 Interior Minister: 011 571 566 1600, Fax: 571 566 3234 People's Ombudsman: 011 571 314 7300, or 571 346 1225, Fax: 571 640 0491 Spring Speaking Tour with
Ella Florez from San José de
Apartadó Hosting a speaking event with Ella Cecilia is an exciting opportunity for furthering global non-violent struggles. Ella Cecilia is a leading woman activist continuing the fight for justice and peace in war-torn Colombia. As the Director of Communications with the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, she will speak about her first-hand experience of living and working in this community that, while struggling against injustice, takes a courageous stance of not providing support to any armed group in Colombia's civil war. She will tell how this radical position has forced displacement and killing of community members, and how the community, along with others in a newly formed network of Communities in Resistance, remains strong in their commitment to nonviolence. If you interested in hosting, or assisting in hosting Ella Cecilia
Florez Alvarez, please contact:
Cacarica is an Afro-Colombian community under siege that has pledged not to collaborate with either side in the civil war. They seek to protect the diverse ecosystem of their rainforest territory and to preserve their traditional way of life. The community of San José de Apartadó has likewise taken an extraordinary and nonviolent stand by refusing to support any armed actor involved in Colombia's conflict. They are resisting forced displacement by building a Peace Community based on solidarity. Our visit and dissemination of these courageous and peaceful struggles to build alternatives to war increases their safety and constitutes vital moral support for them. … In Bogotá and Medellín,
meet human rights defenders, grassroots groups resisting violence,
barrios of displaced
people and government and diplomatic officials. REQUIREMENTS COST: $1400 (covers food, lodging, in-country transportation), plus round-trip airfare for U.S.-Colombia travel. Fundraising tips can be provided. For more information, contact: Application deadline is May 18. For an application, contact Liza Smith at lizaj621@yahoo.com Bush would give Colombia nearly $700 million President George W. Bush's proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2005, delivered to Congress on February 2, would grant Colombia nearly $700 million in aid. Colombia would receive a $436 million share of the over $700 million Andean Counternarcotics Initiative, an aid package to Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela. This is a $24 million increase over 2004 and places Colombia second only to Pakistan in foreign aid administered by the State Department. Most of the money is earmarked for drug crop fumigation and drug traffic interdiction, along with some for strengthening judicial institutions and human rights protection. The budget includes $109 million to finance the 8th Brigade, a special Colombian military unit that protects the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline, and to train and equip new units to protect infrastructure and pursue guerrilla and paramilitary leaders. Another $12 million is proposed for aerial interdiction of narcotics traffic. Colombia will also receive from $110 million to $120 million in a separate Defense Department budget. Despite admission by members of Bush's administration that Plan Colombia has not halted the drug trade, Bush praised the success of President Alvaro Uribe Vélez's administration in its campaign against drug trafficking and armed opposition forces. SOURCES: El Colombiano, 2/3/04; El Tiempo, 2/3/04; Latinnews Daily, 2/3/04; Washington File, 2/3/04. To sign up for Colombia Week, e-mail editors@colombiaweek.org with "SUBSCRIBE" in the subject line. You can also view archives at http://www.colombiaweek.org. Letter from the Field: You're Invited On November 14, The Wall Street Journal published a column by Mary Anastasia O'Grady, attacking the peace community movement in Colombia. She twisted and bent the usual accusations that peace community members are guerrillas even further and said that the community leaders are guerrillas who hold the civilian population in the communities against their will in horrible conditions in order to serve as a human shield for their military operations. I plant my feet here on the grassy paths of the peace community of San José and I call this place home, at least for now. I know the children who pad into my living room just to see what I am up to on a sunny Sunday. I know the sound of horse hooves and pigs hooves and human feet in rubber boots on the grass. I see how every Thursday the community members and leaders get together to decide what community project they will work on together the next day. I see the community members shoveling sand out of the river bed and hauling it up to the road that connects them to the nearest town maintaining their link to the outside world, a link that the government neglects. I see how problems emerge people disagree or people don't get along and how they deal with that too. I watch life here, I participate in life here and I see how whole it is. The community members are resisting all of the time resisting the economic and political forces that want them out of the way or as slaves for mega-projects extracting hard wood from the rainforest with Maderas de Darien or cultivating African palm for its oil. And while the community members are resisting one hundred percent of the time, and while that is radical and heroic, they are also just people living here, making decisions living all facets of life, not just the politicized version of life. I was chatting with Alejandro, a young man who lives in La Union about one piece of this life. Alejandro is an energetic nineteen-year-old who can work all day in the hot sun and still enjoy singing at the top of his voice while he wanders around town in the evening. He often comes by our house to say hi and can be counted on to help us finish whatever food we are eating. He was telling me about how he really wishes that he had a girlfriend. He lives by himself and is lonely. The problem, he was explaining to me, is that the women in La Union work (they grab their machetes and go out to cut back the weeds, they pack mini-bananas into boxes for export, just like the men) and women in other places aren't used to that kind of work. Before they formed the Peace Community the women tended to work in the house, but now everyone works in the fields, which makes it hard to find a girlfriend willing to come live here. "Oh, I see," I said. "It's
hard to find a girlfriend because the women here must work." I wonder what O'Grady would say about my conversation with Alejandro and about all the other times I have witnessed Peace Community members making their own decisions. Would she say that he was lying? It's an old dynamic in Colombia one side says the second are guerrillas and they are lying; the second says the first are paramilitaries and they are lying, and as long as you are as far away as O'Grady, it is difficult to see which side to believe. But I live here. I get up in the morning, pull on my rubber boots and go out to accompany the people sowing rice and harvesting corn. I sip agua panela (raw sugar water) with the old man who lives across the way, rocking slowly in his hammock while he explains to me, "We don't trust any of the armed groups. They have all attacked us. That is why we are neutral. We are in the middle of the war but we don't participate in it. That is our commitment." When I read O'Grady's column I was shocked and horrified. As a U.S. citizen living for the past seven months with one of the communities she mentioned by name, I couldn't believe that this was being published in one of the largest newspapers in my country all these lies about people I know! The column mentioned San José de Apartadó, Cacarica (an Afro-Colombian community in the same region), and Justicia y Paz (a Catholic human rights collective) each of whom I know personally and one, San José, that I know very deeply. I felt the wrongness of her tangle of assumptions and extrapolations throughout my whole body. Each sentence of her column rang false. In addition to describing the communities as "FARC safe havens," she attacked them on many other fronts. She gave credibility to President Uribe's assertions that human rights NGOs work with the FARC. She said that peace communities misuse the "autonomy" that they are "granted" by the state - when the communities actually feel completely abandoned by the state. Contrary to O'Grady's statement that "government officials are blocked from investigating murders and disappearances," the community of San Jose has continually attempted to get the government to seriously investigate the attacks against them. Of the over one hundred assassinations and disappearances since the creation of the peace community, the government has not been able to find a single perpetrator. Many of O'Grady's misrepresentations were so blatant that I found myself unable to give her the benefit of the doubt. This was not misunderstanding; this must have been deliberate. O'Grady herself admitted that she had no proof for anything she was saying against the communities she cited unconfirmed "testimonies." Community leaders have identified this tactic of using false testimonies and other manipulations of the judicial system as judicializacion (legal harassment), a new strategy in the war against campesino activists. Instead of killing community leaders as in the past, government institutions bring legal cases against them, entangling them in the wilds of what many observers consider Colombia's famously corrupt justice system. The effect is that community leaders, human rights defenders, and resources remain tied up in defense and the community is less able to continue its work of resistance. Looked at through this lens, O'Grady's words are more than just cruel and unfair, but another voice - and a loud one - helping to stigmatize these communities, making judicializacion appear more justified. I wanted the community to see what people far away in another world called New York City were saying about them, so I translated the column. Translating O'Grady I felt as if I was giving her even more of a voice. Though my intention was good, I still felt as if I was contributing to her slander of the community. By the time I was done I was so angry how could this woman write these things? How could someone publish this with one column casting doubt over the integrity of all of the peace communities in Colombia, of people who already suffered so much? Heady with my anger and frustration, I went over to Luz Marina's house. Luz is one of the community leaders in La Union, a tough mother of four who cares for her children, her house, her banana field, her cows, and her work as a member of the community council with the same determination, patience, warmth, and ready laugh. I had mentioned the article to her before and gave her the translation, feeling like I should apologize for the ignorance of my countrywoman. "Here is that article and just look at it! She says that the community leaders are FARC and that they hold the people here against their will and that they don't let the government investigate cases andŠ oh, it is just horrible!" Luz glanced over the article, "She's from the United States?" she asked me. "Yes," I agreed, embarrassed. "You should invite her here. If she thinks we are doing all of that, she should come here and see for herself. We have nothing to hide." I was refreshed by Luz's reaction she effortlessly gave O'Grady the benefit of the doubt that I withheld. She must be confused if she wrote all that better that she come here and find out the truth. The community members are proud to be hard working campesinos in nonviolent resistance. While it does matter what lies are spread about them in the United States, they still continue here working, living, looking for girlfriends, building roads, laughing whatever the Wall Street Journal or anyone else publishes about them. So, Ms O'Grady, wherever you are, please come here and talk to the people who live in the communities. See what their lives are and what their choices are, instead of just listening to what is whispered in your ear. Luz Marina says you are invited. And if you want, you can even stay with me because I am learning, I am being taught, that it makes more sense to let the truth be known than to just get angry about the lies. ***
In Peace
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©2004 Fellowship of Reconciliation |